Update(10:40pm CST, 8/23/07): While watching tonight's game I noticed that CW38-DT is broadcast in 480i which is the lowest quality signal available for over the air digital television. In other words we will not be seeing true HD on the local CW station anytime soon.

Tonight is yet another Saints preseason game. We will beating up on the Chiefs in Kansas City and our home town television announcers will be doing the play by play just like last week's game against the Bengals. If you're like me and don't have cable (why pay for something so expensive and get so little in return, especially since HD is free over the air) then you'll be watching the game on simulcast on New Orleans CW38 (or whatever you're local station may be). Unfortunately, although Cox Sports Television (CST) will be recording and broadcasting the game in high definition, Saints fans will not be able to see the full HD feed without paying for cable and a cable HD package. Instead we will be watching a severely scaled down broadcast. Last week's game had obvious image flaws (I think this happens when a station compresses their digital signal to much and broadcasts in lower that regular quality to punish their viewers) and extremely poor almost un-understandable sound. Luckily the game was good enough that I didn't care, but I was still extremely annoyed. Why the whine if I'm not paying for cable? I'm not asking for HD (although the NFL Network game the first week of preseason was in full HD-OTA on ABC26), I'm only asking for normal analog quality. I'm sure CST could be broadcasting in normal 480i (low quality digital signal that looks like regular TV should) instead of this YouTube quality junk that they are putting out. Although the issue might not be with CST, CW38 doesn't broadcast anything in true HD, even the normal CW made HD programs like Smallville (I yet to see any widescreen HD content on 38-1 this summer, maybe things will change when the regular season starts, but I doubt it). The least CST and CW38 could do is broadcast in regular quality, they do use the public airways to show us a team that is subsidized by our tax dollars.

I'm not holding my breath though. Regular season will be full HD-OTA at least, but with a trade off of bad commentating by national announcers that don't like to slate it towards our market. Guess I'll be setting up that radio then.